1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the management of media content. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for enabling a presentation system to optimize presentation of media content.
2. Background Art
Films, television programming, entertainment trailers, and the like, are examples of content that lends itself to distribution in the form of media files. In general, media files may be described as containing media elements that can be processed by a media player and rendered on a display device to present audio, video, and multimedia content to a consumer. Media content contained in a data file may be encoded according to an increasingly wide variety of standardized and proprietary encoding formats. Each encoding format can be decoded by a compatible codec to generate signals suitable for presentation on a media presentation system such as a television, computer monitor, or mobile communication device display, for example. In many instances, more than one codec variable or profile are available for a particular encoding format. Under those circumstances, each alternative codec profile might perform differently, and one in particular may provide superior performance for a specific set of parameters. In other instances, a compatible codec may not be available at all, and the encoded media may then have to be transcoded from a first encoding format to a second encoding format that is compatible with an available codec to be viewed, or, if transcoding is not possible, the encoded media cannot be viewed at all.
Within a media file, the codec specific information is typically carried in the encoded portion of the media content. For example, codec specific information may be carried in the header portion of a Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) stream. There are, however, several disadvantages associated with this conventional inclusion of codec information in the encoded media content itself. One significant disadvantage to this conventional approach is that a media player, for example, must begin decoding the media content to obtain the codec specific information. A second disadvantage is that the codec information encoded into the media content according to the conventional approach does not provide guidance for optimizing presentation of the media content for a given set of playback system or display constraints; it merely provides information on how the media was encoded prior to distribution. As a result, playback systems may decide in an ad hoc manner to modify the presentation of the content using its own set of viewing parameters. This is especially true in the case wherein one or more of the specified encoding parameters cannot be supported by the playback device. The result in many cases is a viewing experience dictated by the playback device, and independent of the original encoding parameters.
Another disadvantage associated with the conventional approach is that when the producers of media content encodes that content for distribution, they may do so in a manner that targets a specific codec, certain decoding parameters, or certain playback systems, for example. Nevertheless, there is no mechanism to require or ensure that those targeted conditions will in fact exist when the media file is decoded and presented. As a result, the presentation experience of a consumer of the media content may be different from that intended by the producers and/or creators of the content.
For example, headers of encoded video may contain information describing encoding parameters such as the bit rate, aspect ratio, and the video profile. In addition, those headers may indicate the file size, include metadata, and identify the locations of the video and audio tracks in the media file. That header information describes attributes of the media content and/or encoders and/or how the source was compiled, but it does not convey any information about how the media file is to be viewed. In other words, despite certain assumptions about the presentation experience having informed the upstream transcoding and encoding processes, instructions for producing a presentation experience corresponding to those upstream assumptions are typically not included in the media file. Consequently, there may exist a significant aesthetic disjunction between the presentation experience intended by the creators and/or producers of the media content, and that actually experienced by the consumer.
The disjunction may be particularly acute when the playback system and the rendering system are not the same, for example, when a playback system such as a cable box, optical disc player, or game console is rendered on a television set. In these situations, the two systems may operate independently of one another to affect the viewing experience, according to their own respective rules, which are not guided by the intent of the content creators or producers. Moreover, game controllers and mobile communication devices provide examples of multi-function playback systems that are designed for very diverse functions (e.g., game playback as well as film playback as well as telecommunications) and in which the graphics processes may be optimized by default for non-media playback functions, to the detriment of media playback. The absence of a mechanism for conveying parameters corresponding to the intended presentation experience prevents these devices from adjusting their settings so as to improve the presentation experience for the consumer.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a solution for optimizing presentation of media content across a wide range of playback and viewing devices. It is desirable that the solution enable a creator and/or producer of the content to convey presentation guidelines to rendering and/or playback systems so as to allow those systems to optimize the presentation in a manner consistent with their performance capabilities.